


"The only place I wanted to be..."

by CynicwithaSecret



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Crying, One Shot, Secret love, Talk in the Woods, fluff!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 07:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10355739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicwithaSecret/pseuds/CynicwithaSecret
Summary: Jaime Lannister has reached a breaking point. He feels alone, and retreats to somewhere he knows he'll find comfort. Brienne tries to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written a while ago, before the end of S6 on the show.  
> Using both books and show characterisations here, bit of a mash.  
> One shot, just a short one :)

She had seen him like this before.

His grey-gold hair was getting longer, had stopped growing outward and started growing down again, and his face was bristly and unshaven. The green of his beautiful eyes was dulled. He saw, yet he did not see. Dressed like a peasant, weak and stained with dried tears, Brienne thought he looked like he had after he lost his sword hand. Now the stump was naked and healed, but he was thrown back into a similar sorrow. What he had lost, of course, went deeper than mere flesh this time.

_I helped him back then. That’s why he’s here. I can help him through this now._

“Jaime…”

He said nothing. She caught him when, weak and shaking, he fell towards her. She held him close, hearing his sobs. Unsure and uncertain, Brienne rubbed his back.

“You’re safe. I’m here,” she said softly.

“Don’t lie to me, Brienne,” he cried.

So she stopped talking. She just held him as he wept, and he wept for a long time, head resting on her shoulder.

The snow was harsh and crisp in the sickly daylight. The Wolfswood had sheltered them from danger for now, but the worry for both of their futures held her in nervous glancing from tree to tree. The horses were calm, however, and she heard nothing but the wind, the leaves, and Jaime’s bitter tears.

“The thing is,” he finally said, “I’m not as grieved as I thought I would be once. We would die together, I thought. If she was dead, how could I be alive? We were the one person.”

“I understand.”

All of a sudden, Jaime tore away from her tentative embrace, avoiding her gaze. Anger and bitter misery clouded his face.

“No you don’t!” he spat. “How could you understand? You’ve never…”

He stopped himself, and Brienne, although she tried to be strong, knew closed wounds were ripped open again inside her heart. Her mouth dropped open, and she recoiled. _He’s just saying it. He doesn’t mean that, surely. He just needs to be alone. Why would he want my ugly face around?_ Hanging her head, she made to walk away.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Jaime said then, frustration grating his voice. “Please, don’t go. I can't bear to be alone when…”

There was something so pitiful in his demeanour that she couldn’t just leave him. She stood, arms crossed around herself, watching his distracted movements.

When he first arrived and she saw his face, her relief and foolish happiness had made her want to rush to him at once and throw her arms around him, to hear him whisper her name and say so many...things…but, obviously, reality came back to slap her. Jaime did not love her. Jaime would not want her to throw herself at him like she secretly wanted to. Nor would she ever risk setting herself up for the humiliation which would surely come if she did. Guilt had overwhelmed her the next moment when she realised his misery. He heard maybe a week before Winterfell did. Of the flames.

“What do you want me to do, Jaime?” she asked softly, as soft as the leaves. Terrified of his reaction. He could be so cruel.

Those green eyes, sharp and soulful, turned up to the sky and down to the ground, as if he suddenly could not recall where he was, or what he was doing.

“You’re all I have left, you know,” he laughed harshly. “My family…all of them…there’s none of them left I care about.”

Brienne blinked.

“Your brother,” she mumbled. “Lord Tyrion…”

“He MURDERED our father and betrayed my trust!” Jaime shouted then, tears still falling. “HE lost the right to call himself my brother the moment those bolts left his crossbow!”

Wide-eyed, she looked away. Such rage in his beautiful gaze was too much for her to bear.

“I’m sorry, Jaime,” she breathed. “You, of all people, you deserved none of it.”

His feet crunched in the snow as he stepped closer.

“Deserved?” he echoed angrily. “Don’t talk to me of what I deserve, Brienne! I _deserved_ all of this!”

“That’s not true,” she protested quietly, but with a certainty beyond any trace of doubt. He glared at her as if she had said something mocking.

“I have lost all three of my misbegotten bastards,” he seethed, spit flying from his lower lip and eyes red and swollen. “I was never a father to them, but I lost them all the same. I was a Kingsguard, and four kings have died under my guard! And Cersei,” he choked on her name. “I was not there to stop her when she burned the sept and everyone in it. I should have run my sword through her breast before I stood aside and let her do what she did.”

He pressed his face to his hands, shaking, and Brienne moved to hold him again.

“I deserved it all,” he wept. “I deserve it all and more.”

“You don’t.”

“Don’t lie to me, Brienne.”

“I would never lie to you,” she insisted, clutching him close. “Never.”

_I love you._

The sky must have opened, because flecks of white ice came showering down upon them. They melted on Jaime’s cloak, and on the strands of his hair. His breathing slowed, his fists unclenched.

“I was riding north before I heard,” he said softly.

Brienne nodded, having known that even though she did not know why.

“Lady Sansa may welcome you as a guest,” she said. “The others won't. You should stay here and let me talk to her before approaching the castle. I know she’ll speak for you.”

He removed his head from her shoulder and drew back to meet her eyes. It was a relief to see him pulling the tatters of his broken soul together again. She had faith he could.

“I didn’t come here for the Starks,” he said, shrugging. “I came here because of you.”

Brienne blinked again, eyes narrowing by instinct, expecting some kind of joke or barb.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “I’m sworn to Lady Sansa. You can't mean to ask me to betray her.”

“Stubborn as always,” Jaime rolled his eyes. “Of course that’s not what I meant!”

“Then what?”

Something very weak and falsely hopeful had started shouting in her head. That bitter smile of his made her heart beat faster, and a predictable, irritating blush crept up her neck.

“I thought of anywhere in the world I might go,” he said. “Casterly Rock, across the Narrow Sea. Anywhere but King’s Landing. And the only place I wanted to be was here.”

Brienne raised an eyebrow and glanced around.

“The Wolfswood?”

“With you, Brienne, you daft cow.”

She stared at him, perhaps too suspiciously, because he dropped his eyes and became uncomfortable.

“If you send me from your side, I underst-”

Brienne pulled him into her arms fast, her heart pounding as she felt his hand around her back.

“Shut up, Jaime,” she said, and smiled secretly into his hair.


End file.
